1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to installing a device driver on one or more clients from a server via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to install printer drivers using operating system (OS) dependent systems, for example, using Windows®, users select “add printer” on a “properties” page for printers and then input necessary information through a dialog called a wizard. Also, in order to minimize the number of user operations, in addition to applications, printer drivers are installed using installers.
When the installation methods described above are used in large companies having many users, that is, having many clients, printer drivers must be installed on many clients. Thus, the total number of man-hours required for installing the printer drivers on all of the clients is not negligible from an economic point of view. Also, such clients need to have a performance higher than a predetermined level for installation of printer drivers. Thus, detailed manuals for such operations must be prepared and training must be provided for all the clients. In the worst case, network administrators must perform a large number of tasks, such as installing a printer driver on each of the clients. In other words, in accordance with an increase in the number of clients, operational man-hours are increased proportionally.
Also, in companies having many computers, many days may be needed for properly installing drivers on the many computers.
Point and print installation using a printer server is used in order to reduce as much as possible such operational man-hours required for installing printer drivers. In this installation method, a mechanism provided in Windows NT® or Windows 2000® for automatically distributing a printer driver to a client is used.
However, although such a point and print method using a printer server is capable of installing a printer driver on all of the clients by automatically distributing the printer driver, installation of the printer driver starts irrespective of the state of the clients. Thus, if, for example, a printer driver is updated when a client is performing printing, the printing is suspended or the printer driver cannot be updated.